India App Developers All Over New BlackBerry

Smartphone users in India may have to wait till the end of this month for the launch of the new BlackBerry, but it has already managed to create a lot of pre-launch buzz in the country.

This was largely because BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd., reached out to a large number of software applications developers in India last year to create a basket of applications tailored to global and local needs.

Starting mid-last year, the company held a series of workshops across the country to help developers understand the new device and operating system, Annie Mathew, BlackBerry’s director for developer alliances and business development in India, told India Real Time.

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Over the last two-and-a-half years, the number of BlackBerry app developers in India has jumped ten-fold to 40,000, Ms. Mathew says. By 2015, a third of the world’s BlackBerry app developer community will be based out of India, she adds, up from about 25% now.

India is the eighteenth largest market for BlackBerry in July-September, behind mature markets like the U.K., the U.S. and Canada, data from Canalys showed.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company last month unveiled two new phones–a touch-screen device called the Z10 and a device with a physical keyboard called the Q10–in the U.S. BlackBerry will launch the Z10 smartphone in India by the end of this month, a person familiar with the matter told India Real Time.

India is among the key markets for BlackBerry in Asia. With rising Internet and mobile penetration, the sales of smartphones that can be used to browse the Internet, access emails and play videos is set to grow exponentially over several years, say analysts.

BlackBerry has made some strides here expanding its market from business types that have been the core of BlackBerry users to college-age young people.

But it remains a small part of the market. According to mobile research firm Canalys Google Inc.’s Android operating system commanded 80% of all smartphone shipments to India by software platform between July and September, the latest available data.

BlackBerry accounted for just 2% of the shipment by software platform during this period.

It is also in the interests of BlackBerry to foster a local apps-developer community.

“We see a lot of encouragement from handset makers in apps development,” says G. Rajeev, an industry analyst. “The more the apps are closer to consumers, the chances of handsets getting picked up are higher.”

Among the apps developed locally is one that contains information on 128 tourist destinations across India – an effort to turning the BlackBerry into a tourist guide. Another app helps start a car’s ignition, turns an air conditioner on and off, and lights up a car’s headlights from within a prescribed radius.

Another app called Storyboard helps a BlackBerry user create a slideshow presentation on the move and share it on BlackBerry’s messaging service. It also helps create travelogues that can be updated on any social media platform.

A lot of technical talent in India is oriented towards developing applications that are simple, consumer-friendly, and straightforward to create if you have a coding background. It is this talent that the Canadian smartphone maker sought to leverage in India ahead of the BB10 launch, says Ms. Mathew.

She says the company’s focus on a younger generation of developers and those from smaller cities and towns has helped widen the reach on potential apps for the new device.

Last year, the company set up its first technology innovation center in Asia to make BlackBerry technology available to the developer community at the “Startup Village” in Kochi, in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

The innovation center offered infrastructure for a number of student developers to experiment with BlackBerry technology.

“The BlackBerry ecosystem is in a nascent stage,” says Nithin George, one of the founders of Hangout India, a non-profit student applications developer community at the Startup Village that helped rope in a number of apps developers for BlackBerry.

So far, from the Startup Village, 54 student developers have created 164 software applications for BB10, of which nearly 40 have already been approved and uploaded to the BB10 platform, Mr. George says.

BlackBerry has exploited its “aspirational” brand image in India to help excite developers and consumers about its BB10 products, says Tim Shepherd, senior analyst with Canalys. The growth in BlackBerry’s developer base in India is linked to its investment in the market, he adds.

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.